


As Ice in the Desert

by DachOsmin



Category: 12th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Erotic Snacking, Foe Yay, Hand & Finger Kink, Hand Feeding, Identity Porn, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: Saladin visits Richard's sickbed with fruit, and a question in his eyes.





	As Ice in the Desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oliviacirce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviacirce/gifts).



_"We, though his rivals, see nothing in Richard we can find fault with but his valour; nothing to hate but his experience in war. But what glory is there in fighting with a sick man?"_

_-Saffadin, brother of Saladin, Chronicon de Rebus Gestis Ricardi Primi_

_***_

The fever takes Richard between Acre and Jaffa, in the highest month of the summer of the fourth year of the crusade. Everything about him is heat- the blazing sun on the sand and the fire roaring within him.

He lies on the border of Dream and Death for six days and nights, and his dreams are fearsome and terrible things. He sees serpents with scales of bone rising up out of the poisoned water of the sea; he sees a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon its heads. He sees the vineyards of Aquitaine and Gascogne running with the blood of innocents, and in the distance the light of the Holy Sepulcher dimming into darkness.

When the fever breaks on the seventh day, Death is watching him.

His tent is as he remembers, otherwise. His mother had ordered it be richly appointed before he left, and so there are golden chalices inset with mother of pearl by his bedside, braziers smoking with pungent herbs in the eaves, and thick tapestries woven by the nuns at Fontevrault to cover the walls. A single candle gutters in its sconce on his bedside table.

All is still. He is alone, except for Death.

This Death is not like the one-and-thousand corpses he has seen since he first started fighting this hellish war. This Death does not wear sallow waxy skin, or have eyes either glazed like milk or else lost to the ravaging of carrion crows.

No, this Death is brimming with life. He is swathed in a black cloak, but Richard can see he is broad of chest and tall of stature. His face is touched by lines, but beneath them his skin is rich in color like fine Baltic amber.

It makes a strange perverted sense, that Death should come to him as a Saracen. But on the other hand…

“I had not thought Death would be so comely,” he croaks.

The man starts at that, and then lets out a hiss of laughter. “Did you not? I would have thought you courting him all the while. You leave him bodies strewn about like rose petals.” His French is lilting and strange, but somehow all the more beautiful for it.

Richard reaches out towards the apparition with an unsteady hand. His limbs are still fever-weak; his arm trembles and knocks against a wine goblet perched forgotten on his bedside table. The goblet dashes to the floor in an arc of bright metal and flying drops of wine. Richard’s throat aches as he watches the wine soaking into the thick rugs and below, into the thirsty sand.

“Call one of the servants,” he croaks, letting his head drop back against his pillow in disgust. The famed Lion-Heart, too weak to control his own body.

“No,” the man replies, too quickly. “no need for that.” And he leans over and plucks the chalice from the floor before setting it back on the table.

Richard stares at the chalice. The wrongness strikes him suddenly, as if he were climbing a staircase and, expecting a step where there was none, fell. The man is not some figment of his fever addled mind.

He’s a stranger decked in the garb of Richard’s enemies, alone in his private tent. An assassin. Richard notes again the stillness of the room. If he were to cry out, would anyone come?

“It would be fitting,” he says haltingly, “to know the name of the man who is to kill me.” Strange: he had always thought death would take him in the field, with a sword in his hand and a fierce bright sky as witness to a glorious death. This does not feel like the magnificent ascension he had imagined. It feels like an ending.

The man’s laughter breaks the quiet. “I thought you named me Death?”

Richard takes a deep breath and prays in his heart of hearts. _Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur nomen tuum…_ “I would ask that you make it quick,” he croaks. His thoughts drift to his homeland, so far away across the sea. Aquitaine, with its fair coasts and bountiful vineyards. The wide fields and proud towns of Normandy and Gascogne. And beyond them, England. Will his mother cry for him?

The man tsks; it feels almost fond. “Yusuf,” he says at last. “My name is Yusuf. And I have not come to kill you.”

Richard raises an eyebrow. “I cannot think of any other reason a Saracen would come to my chambers cloaked in the dead of night. You are armed, are you not? Tell me truly.”

With a rueful smile, Yusuf draws back the hem of his robe to reveal a beautiful blade buckled at his waist. Richard cannot help but stare: he can tell by the fingerbreadth of metal showing between hilt and scabbard that it’s a masterpiece. It is wrought in the Damascene fashion: frosted, the marks of its forging fire forever frozen into the steel. In Richard’s lands such a sword would cost a king’s ransom. But perhaps here it is not so; perhaps in the Holy Land even a common assassin may carry such a thing.

The man lets his robe fall back over the sword before Richard can look more closely at the jeweling on the hilt. “These are dark days,” Yusuf says to him with an apologetic shrug. “Even men disinclined to evil walk with swords. But the fact remains that I did not come here intending to use it.”

And to that, there is only one question Richard can ask. “Why, then, did you come?”

Yusuf tilts his head to consider Richard. He is silent for a span, and Richard cannot help but fidget under the weight of his gaze. “To see,” he says at last. “Perhaps to understand. And to bring you a gift.” With the last he reaches into the satchel at his side. For all his thoughts of bravery Richard cannot help but flinch, expecting him to emerge with a dagger or a poison-asp in his hands.

But no, he draws out a cask the size of a man’s head. It is a beautiful thing, the surface mirrored bronze chased in silver, the lid edged in winking bits of amethyst. Well, perhaps the poisoned serpent is lying within.

Yusuf shoots him an amused look, as if sensing the mien of his thoughts. He cradles the cask with one hand. With the other he flips open the clasp and then draws up the lid.

There are no asps or scorpions, no noxious plumes of poison or evil looking knives. Instead, rubies.

Richard swallows and squints, looking closer. And then his heart seizes and he realizes he was wrong: they are not gems, but something so much more precious.

Berries.

He spots black mulberries and cornelian cherries, plump dates and ruby-red pomegranate arils that wink in the candlelight. And packed beneath the fruit, blessedly, joyfully: ice. Richard could weep at the sight of it, if only his body had the water left to give.

He can almost taste the sweetness of the ice on his parched tongue, can feel the juice of the berries on his cracked lips. “You’ve poisoned them,” he rasps.

“That,” Yusuf says, “would be a sinful waste.” He plucks one of the mulberries from the top of the pile and considers it. Richard cannot help but notice that he has remarkably elegant fingers, long and tapered like palm fronds. Yusuf winks at him and pops the berry into his mouth. His eyes flutter closed as he chews; a single runnel of pungent juice trickles down his chin. Perhaps it is the fever; perhaps it is the thirst- but Richard is seized with the need to capture the droplet on his tongue before it falls to the floor.

His mouth is too dry to water, but he feels the ache of need all the same. “Not poisoned, then. You’ve simply come to kill me through temptation.”

Yusuf chuckles low and deep; Richard can feel the sound in the marrow of his bones. “Oh no. What you want, you may have.” And true to his word, he extends the box across the space between them, resting it on Richard’s bedside table with a quiet thump.

Richard can feel the coolness of the ice in the air. In this moment, he would abjure all claim to the holy land if only to taste it but… “I… I cannot lift it.” The shame curdles the words as he speaks them. He does not allow himself to look at this enemy of his for fear that he will see contempt of his weakness or worse: pity.

But Yusuf only makes a quiet sound. “I see.”

Richard thinks, for an agonizing moment, that Yusuf will make him beg. And that he will not do, cannot do. It is against every fiber of his being. Better to die.

“Well, why not,” Yusuf says to himself, scooting his stool closer. “Righteous are those who feed the hungry and visit the sick.”

They are suddenly close enough that Richard can see every one of Yusuf’s lashes, can pick out the motes of amber ringing the pupils of his eyes. He is hopelessly trapped in Yusuf’s gaze as Yusuf plucks a single pomegranate aril from the cask and brings it to Richard’s lips with infinite care.

His mouth opens of its accord. Yusuf sets the seed beneath his lips with gentleness, his thumb a fleeting glance over Richard’s lower lip as he pulls his hand away.

Richard closes his mouth, oddly breathless. He bites down on the berry- carefully, carefully- and lets out a small whimper as the berry bursts between his teeth. Sweet, wet- even if Yusuf said outright they were brimming with poison, Richard would eat another, and another, and lick the bowl clean once it was empty.

When he opens his eyes, Yusuf is watching him with a strange expression on his face. “Would you like another?”

“Yes,” he croaks, and has not even the shame to feel guilty this time.

This time, Yusuf selects a date. He holds Richard’s eyes like a challenge as he slips the date between his lips. Richard accepts it, and chews, and swallows, all without looking away. He cannot say what winning this strange challenge would mean, but he finds that he wants more than anything to find out.

Yusuf gently feeds him fruit for what feels like an age, all in silence. With each berry and each touch of ice, Richard feels his body coming alive again. One by one, the berries disappear. Yusuf’s gaze is intense. What will happen to this fragile peace between them once there are no more berries left? He cannot say whether he is terrified or eager to find out.

The final berry is in a sorry state, half crushed from its time at the bottom of the pile. As Yusuf lifts it out of the ice the red juice trickles downwards, beading at his fingertips.

He rests it on Richard’s tongue. He does not withdraw his fingers.

The juice from the berry glistens in the candlelight.

A shiver runs through Richard’s body. And it is the worst kind of sin, but in that moment he cannot bring himself to care: he opens his mouth and licks at Yusuf’s hand- hesitant at first, the barest brush of his tongue over the pads of Yusuf’s fingers. And Yusuf does not pull away.

He is bolder, then, licking away every trace of juice he can find. He runs his tongue over Yusuf’s knuckles, takes his fingers fully into his mouth and sucks.

Richard dares a glance at Yusuf. Despite the light of the candles, his eyes are very dark beneath the fall of his lashes. His lips are parted, as red as the berries, but sweeter still.

And he said he would not beg, but in this, of all things, he cannot help it- the word flies from his lips unbidden- “ _please.”_

***

Yusuf leaves in the early hours of the morning, after the candles have burned low and all the ice melted into clear water in the cask on the side of the table.

From his place in the bed, Richard watches Yusuf gather his things. He pauses in the flap of the tent, his figure silhouetted against the canvas by the first hints of dawn. “Farewell, Richard. May we meet again, as Allah wishes it.”

“Does your master know that you came?” Richard asks as Yusuf turns to go. “Will the Mighty Saladin forgive you this?”

But Yusuf only chuckles quietly to himself. “My master knows all things, and is ever-forgiving and all-forbearing.”

“I have heard Saladin is a mighty man, a great man.”

Yusuf shrugs. “He is not so great as that. Merely a poet who loves his homeland very much, and is sore to see it so hurt by war.”

I think,” Richard says slowly, “that I would like to meet him.”

“Perhaps you will,” Yusuf says. He pauses, as if thinking. “If you were to propose a peace at Jaffa, by the sea where the pomegranates grow, he would come. As Allah wills it, he will come.”

And then he is gone, as silently as he came, just before the edge of dawn crests the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you have a wonderful Yuletide! Big thanks to my betas, Rain and Searchingweasel!


End file.
